I have made a couple of submissions against the questions they pose ontheir site.

The first was on NASA working with international partners and the second was about the role commercial companies should play.

I am a little surprised that there are not more comments listed and somewhat dissappointed that in their questions and answers section people are asking questions that have nothing to do with the committee or they could answer for themselves if they just read the committee's literature. I guess that just shows that with a world population in the billions their are very few people who actuall give a damn about space. Perhaps people are just to lazy.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I put in a submission, maybe it's listed there, for what it's worth. I spoke to them about the need for commercial space development and of course humans on Mars- two goals which I have always believed can be pursued together- with the private space sector being strong. Let's see if NASA listens.

I was a little surprised to find out that the committee, according to Norm Augustine, will be giving a set of options and not recommending any specific future path.

Also listening to Rand Simberg on the Space Show this week it seems that it will be largely irrelevant what the committee says and that Congress and the Obama administration is likely to cherry pick the parts it wants and ignore those it doesn't, as other administrations have done in the past with previous review panel findings. Also NASA will probably interpret the findings in a way that will justify what ever route they want if they are not given an unambiguous directive to adopt a particular approach, as has happened in the past NASA will look for loop holes to do what it wants.

I'm not sure whether anyone has presented the commission with a comparison of costs between building a LEO version of Orion for ISS supply and a commercial alternative for launch on an EELV. Why not keep Orion for beyond LEO only as it seems that SpaceX's Dragon will be ready at least 4 years earlier and cheaper to operate? The vision is supposed to get us beyond LEO so why spend so much on Orion keeping us there?

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I saw Jeff Greason's presentation to the committee on YTUBE for exploration beyond LEO and I liked what he was saying about in orbit fuel depots being a game changer and reducing the need for heavy lift vehicles. Allowing other countries to deliver the fuel as part of a partnership was a good idea.

Robert Zubrin's Mars direct presentation to them is also on YTUBE and I was less convinced after I saw it. The idea has been around for a few years now and quite frankly I was suprised he didn't make a better argument for it. He spent to long on the retorhic and didn't leave any time for questions at the end, whether this was intentional or not was had to tell. I think he should have left the presentation to someone else who would have come across better, shaking his fingers at the committe and thumping the stand with his hand to emphasis points didn't look to professional and served to undermine what he was saying. Also his argument about apollo being the right way of doing a Mars exploration was stupid and listening to what he said about what/how NASA has spent since apollo made me cringe. This might have been alright for his usual followers who are already convinced but the arguments were too childish to stand up to much scrutany. Its a pity, I think he more or less punted the idea in to touch.

WASHINGTON — A blue ribbon panel tasked with reviewing NASA's manned spaceflight program delivered to the White House Tuesday a 12-page summary of its findings, including two options based closely on the space agency's current plan for replacing its aging space shuttle fleet."<

I saw all of the public meetings on youtube via SpaceVidCast channel. Which I was impressed by SpaceVidCast for putting it up there when most news would not touch it.

It seems to me we are definitely at a crossroads and need a unifying *thing* to keep the different aspects of space exploration cooperating and not just doing everything at once. Budgets just cannot handle everything.

I think we really need to hardness a hardy international effort for space exploration. And to do that politically would seem to require an international treaty of space nations. That way the effort has a charter, moneys from member states, personnel from member states, hardware procured, services procured (commercial space), and overseeing research.

Theres a couple of interesting articles about the commissions findings on SpaceRef.com, one of them by Micheal Griffen.

One interesting point that Dr Griffen brought up was that if most of the options presented require extra money then why not give the money to constellation which at least has gone beyond a paper plan and powerpoint slides? While obviously being the main arcitect of the current strategy creates a bit of a question mark over his impartialality in this matter, its still a valid point.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I just hope they let NASA be. Those are good guys working there and they have enough engineering challenges without the gov changing the plans every few years. May Ares / Orion is not the best plan ever, but it is a good one and one that will work. Just give NASA what they need to finish the job and get out of the way.

If you take the view that LEO and ISS transport would be taken over by commercial operators and possibly administered by someone other than NASA then constellation/orion is probably no worse than other beyond LEO system proposed.

Why does the ISS need to be run by NASA once its built? Use of commercial services for crew and cargo could be administered by someone else, afterall I dont suppose Bigelow expects NASA to run his private stations for him. Create a separate body to look after ISS and leave NASA to concentrate on beyond LEO. If NASA wants to fly experiments/crew to ISS then they could buy passage from someone else.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

That makes a lot of sense. NASA is a research organisation. They do lots and lots and lots of research, and even build something now and then to prove that it really works. Kind of like a university doing research on automatic driving and building a car that wins the DARPA Grand Challenge. No-one expects Carnegie Mellon or Stanford to now build a production line for automated cars and start selling them by the millions. It's up to the industry to make a product out of it.

Similarly, NASA (or really the Russians of course) have shown that crewed LEO access can be done. Their job is done. It's now up to people like Elon Musk and Robert Bigelow to make a product out of it, and up to NASA to find the next frontier and research the next thing.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

If the ISS was run by a separate entity then NASA could buy time on it for experimentation as and when needed, this would remove the burden from NASA of having to find the cash to keep it going and would stop money earmarked for the ISS being syphoned off into other projects.

In this way all the arguments about whether or not the ISS should be funded are separate from NASA. It is not really down to NASA to have to keep making a case for its continued existence. You dont ask a building firm whether the library they have just built is being used enough or for cash for its upkeep. Similarly the bus service to and from that library is not asked to pay for the library either.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.